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Pimp your Oracle APEX Builder

The disadvantage of the new “Web-World” is that most web pages/applications are not really usable with the keyboard. There are no keyboard shortcuts to trigger different actions like saving the changes, … You always have to use the mouse for that, from a usability point of view that’s not good 🙁

The Oracle APEX development environment is also written in APEX and runs therefor in the browser. By default there are no keyboard shortcuts to “Apply Changes”, “Run the page”, … But here comes the rescue of you productivity and usability! 🙂

So what’s new in this version?

First of all, you have the possibility to define keyboard shortcuts for buttons, links, tabs or items. I have already creates some general keyboard shortcuts, but it’s up to you to change them.

F8 to run the page

F10 for “Apply Changes”. Note: You have to change the value for other languages!

Ctrl+cursor-left to go to the previous page/page item/column

Ctrl+cursor-right to go to the next page/page item/column

On the report definition pages use Alt+1, Alt+2, Alt+3 to activate the different tabs

See the HowTo Install document for details how to define your own shortcuts.

Another enhancement is also related to the usage of the keyboard. On tabular forms, like the “Bulk update page items” page, you are now able to use cursor up/down to scroll through the rows.

The third enhancement allows you to display a background image or change the background color of your APEX Builder if you are running on a production environment. See the example screenshot I have done based on the provided example in the distribution.

You don’t want to have such a background? Just remove it from the config\apex_builder_plugin.js configuration file.